Socialist Pedro Sánchez re-elected president of the government by Parliament
Socialist Pedro Sánchez was re-elected president of the Spanish government by Congress on Thursday, after winning the support of an absolute majority of MPs.
"I declare that the confidence of Congress has been granted to Mr Pedro Sánchez," announced the president of the Congress of Deputies, Francina Armengol, after announcing that 179 of the 350 deputies had voted in favour of the candidate for investiture and 171 against.
The support of the seven deputies of Catalan secessionist Carles Puigdemont, thanks to a controversial agreement to grant amnesty to pro-independence supporters, was key to Sánchez, who has been at the head of the government since 2018 after winning a censure motion, remaining in office for four more years.
Sánchez will be able to form a new government in the coming days with his allies from the far-left Sumar coalition, ending almost four months of deadlock since the 23 July legislative elections.
The president of the government came second in those elections, behind his conservative rival Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and in recent weeks has had to negotiate everywhere to seal agreements with several regionalist groups, whose support is proving crucial in the absence of a clear majority in parliament.
In particular, he has had to hold talks with Puigdemont's Juntos por Cataluña party, which has been living in Belgium for six years to avoid prosecution for leading Catalonia's 2017 secession attempt.
Agreeing, after intense negotiations, to support Sánchez's re-election, Puigdemont obtained from the Socialists a commitment to the forthcoming approval of an amnesty law for hundreds of prosecuted pro-independence supporters, which should allow him to return to Spain.
"Closing wounds"
Outlining the priorities of his new legislature before MPs on Wednesday, Pedro Sánchez defended the necessity and constitutionality of this measure, which he had opposed in the past.
This amnesty is necessary to "close the wounds" opened by the 2017 crisis, said the president of the government, assuring that he wants to guarantee "the unity of Spain through dialogue and forgiveness".
Feijóo's Popular Party accuses the Socialist Party of having conceded the bill with the sole aim of staying in power at all costs, and warns that Spain could end up in the EU's crosshairs, like Hungary and Poland, for the attack on the rule of law that the bill constitutes.
Rejected by the majority of Spaniards, according to several opinion polls, the amnesty led hundreds of thousands of people to take to the streets on Sunday in response to a call by the PP.
A new demonstration is planned for Saturday in Madrid, in which leaders of the PP and the far-right Vox party will take part.
"Amnesty will not improve coexistence", Feijóo responded in Wednesday's parliamentary debate.
Daily far-right rallies in front of the Socialist Party headquarters in Madrid, which have been going on since last week, regularly resulted in riots. On Wednesday night, 15 more people were arrested for disturbing public order and clashing with police, according to the government delegation in Madrid.
As a result of these tensions, more than 1,600 police officers were deployed again on Thursday around the Congress of Deputies, which had been completely cordoned off since Wednesday by the forces of law and order. It is the equivalent of a high-risk football match.
In this context, Sánchez on Wednesday called on the opposition to be "responsible" and not take advantage of the situation to create tension on the streets.
In a sign that the heterogeneous parliamentary majority surrounding the Socialist leader is shaping up to be unstable, Mertxe Aizpurua, the spokesperson for Bildu, warned that the support of her party, considered the heir to the political showcase of the Basque separatist organisation ETA, is not "a blank cheque".
Feijóo went deeper into this perspective and said on Thursday that, "unfortunately, we are going to have a government that is going to be extended month by month and whoever is going to be in charge of the Spanish government is not the president of the government".